Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday August 25, 2008 @09:18AM
from the i-can't-even-get-cable dept.

Death Metal Maniac writes "The study, which was conducted by affordable-broadband advocacy group Speed Matters, found that the nine states with the fastest median download connections are all located on the East Coast. Rhode Island (6.8Mbps) and Delaware (6.7Mbps) have the fastest, and nearly triple the national median download speed of 2.3Mbps. Rounding out the Top 5 states are New Jersey (5.8Mbps), Virginia (5Mbps) and Massachusetts (4.6Mbps)."

Up here in NH (One of the many states nobody cares about, apparently), I got a flyer from my new local provider called Fairpoint.

There was a big controversy over fairpoint buying out NH, Vermont, and Maine, because fairpoint clearly didn't have the resources to roll out fiber optics, and verizon had "plans" to, (apparently not).

Anyway, I got a flyer from them announcing faster-than-ever 7.1 mbps downloads. Of course, in Boston, Comcast offers 16 mbps, but hey, this was still a nice move from my current verizon dsl at 3 mbps.

So I called them up and asked how to get started. They did some checking on things, and told me it wasn't available in my area. I was confused. Did they not have my address when they sent me the flyer? I begged them to take money from me, I just want some speed, please! But alas, We live in the USA. In internet terms, we're third world.

I often see 2.3MB/s downloads and 250KB/s uploads. I with the upload was faster, but that's the limit of DOCSIS2 so there's nothing that can be done about that until FIOS is available or Cox upgrades their system to DOCSIS3.

I mean, FIOS is fast and all from what the numbers say, but I don't look forward to being a Verizon customer..

I mean, FIOS is fast and all from what the numbers say, but I don't look forward to being a Verizon customer.

Yes, it's painful to navigate their phone tree to get anything done. I wanted to increase the speed (i.e., pay them more money), and it took nearly two days of tranfers to get to the right person to talk to.

On the other hand, it took less than 3 days to get that higher speed enabled, and I have had so few problems with the service itself (almost no downtime, no speed limits, etc.) that it's worth the occasional hassle.

One other thing I like about Verizon FIOS is that the price they quote is what you pay. I'm on a $139.99/month plan (15/15 with 5 static IPs) and that is exactly what my bill is each month. No tax, no franchise fee, no "network access fee", etc. Of course, the cell phone side of Verizon can't do their bills like this because "it's a goverment-imposed rule" (not).

Yeah. Seems this report isn't based on what's available, it's based on what people actually have. So therefore, in the northeast, where people tend to be more well off, on average, that people would have faster internet connections, on average. You can probably get 10 mbps plus in any major city in the United States.

So I called them up and asked how to get started. They did some checking on things, and told me it wasn't available in my area. I was confused. Did they not have my address when they sent me the flyer?

Yeah. Frustrating. I've been having fliers delivered to my doorstep for *years* now, and yet they're not even remotely in my area. It's not just a situation where the neighbors down the street can get FiOS, but I'm just barely on the other side of the line-- no. You can't get FiOS in my zip code. You can't even get it in my neighboring zipcodes.

I don't know. Even if that's the case, I would wonder if Verizon intentionally had an ad agency do that, but maintained a level of plausible deniability.

They've changed their setup now, but it used to be that when you checked for FIOS availability, and FIOS was not available, it wouldn't tell you that. Instead, it would say, in great big letters, "Congratulations, Verizon Broadband is available in your area." And then it would point you towards their DSL services as though you were checking for that. I

Well, I am exiled in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and I have 8 mbps down/768 kbps up cable Internet. And it is readily available around here.So, I don't see a problem, besides greed, for US ISPs to deploy faster broadband networks. If the Brazilians did that here in Brazil, baby-Bells should be able to do the same back in the USA...

So, I don't see a problem, besides greed, for US ISPs to deploy faster broadband networks. If the Brazilians did that here in Brazil, baby-Bells should be able to do the same back in the USA...

The problem isn't greed. The problem is that most city governments sell exclusive franchises to ISPs, giving the ISP a local monopoly in exchange for providing access to everybody in town. Since no other ISPs can offer internet service in that market, there's no need to spend money upgrading or lowering prices to

Boston was supposedly the first metro area they rolled out FiOS, and while almost every suburb has it around here their urban penetration has been exactly ZERO. I've been contacting Verizon repeatedly over the last year so I can dump first RCN and now Comcast (god I want to get rid of Comcast/shudder), but they keep saying, we'll roll out in your area soon. Its been over 2 years.

I think the basic issue is that in the suburbs its easy to run the fiber based on the income generated. In

In the city where they'll need to do underground work, and possibly dig up sidewalks/streets its much more cost prohibitive compared to the customers it will get them.

You're right! Many palms to be greased. Unions. Pols. "Neighborhood activists". It is ungodly expensive to do anything in Boston (see Big Dig). Probably this is true of any large American city. And they wonder why those with the means move to the suburbs.

Boston was supposedly the first metro area they rolled out FiOS, and while almost every suburb has it around here their urban penetration has been exactly ZERO.

While Slashdotters are often more interested in FiOS internet service, it's cable television services which call the shots. To offer cable in a locality, Verizon must first obtain a license from the city or town. As of now, the City of Boston has not granted them a license. Looking at the City's website [cityofboston.gov], I don't see any evidence that Verizon has applied for a license either.

Maybe you should call them to see where the licensing procedure stands?

While Slashdotters are often more interested in FiOS internet service, it's cable television services which call the shots. To offer cable in a locality, Verizon must first obtain a license from the city or town.

This is only for TV service. I had FIOS internet for nearly two years before my county approved Verizon as a cable TV provider.

I believe a major part of the problem with Fios in bigger cities is the fiber itself. Last year, Corning announced [engadget.com] development of a bendable fiber, which will help the installation in multi-family homes.
Not having ever had any experience as a fiber installer, I don't know if this is BS or not, but it seems Verizon is now making plans [dslreports.com] to penetrate the bigger cities.

I've worked on embedded systems projects that have used fiber internally as a communications buffer. If a short piece is bent, it breaks and needs to be replaced. And fiber costs more than the normal stuff used for passing messages back and forth... so the bend-and-break (or stretch-and-break) factor is real.

Comcast is not a bad ISP. My friend has had it for some time (Seekonk, MA) and while it's not as fast as my Cox cable connection, Comcast has always been extremely resistant to blocking any network ports for their subscribers.

Even when Code Red was the big thing (and when most ISP's started blocking incoming ports for their subscribers) Comcast wrote a script to check for the vulnerability themselves, and would only block 80 on those subscribers with unpatched IIS. Once you fixed your IIS server, you co

It's not port blocking that I'm that interested in. It's the forging RST packets that pisses me off. Any ISP that injects RST packets into a communication fraudlently can't be called "not a bad ISP". That's like an airline stopping a non-stop flight from New York to LA in Cleveland and stranding all of the passengers there because someone in the back farted a little too loudly. You certainly wouldn't call them "not a bad airline", regardless of how many non-stop flights they had that stopped in Clevelan

Comcast has been horrific for me. Their customer service is terrible, their software for their DVRs is awful (even their own techs say it), and they engage in all sorts of shady underhanded stuff like forging reset packets, throttling high usage customers (who are within the bandwidth limits they ALREADY paid for).

I think the basic issue is that in the suburbs its easy to run the fiber based on the income generated. In the city where they'll need to do underground work, and possibly dig up sidewalks/streets its much more cost prohibitive compared to the customers it will get them.

Dunno about that. NYC has FiOS all over the place. I don't have it, though, as I refuse to give Verizon any moreo of my money (they're my local phone company).

I live in a condo in one of the suburbs of Philadelphia where FiOS was specifically being rolled out to originally. I STILL cannot get FiOS even though people in the development across the street and in the development behind me can!

Meanwhile, as of last week, we STILL cannot buy FIOS in Philadelphia. No matter how much I want to give Verizon my money, they just won't take it.

Where I live, I have only 1 option for internet. It is microwave broadcast. It is (supposedly) a 7Mb connect,the only thing is that after 1 gig of download they throttle you, then after 2 gig they throttle you again. I tried downloading a distro of Linux and it took me 7 days.

And here on the west coast (Western Washington), FIOS doesn't even exist. Hell, we can't even get dry-loop DSL.

That's ok, though, Verizon. Just because we have Amazon, Microsoft, Nintendo of America, uncountable.coms-- I'm sure nobody in this area works in the tech field and really cares about connection speeds. Go ahead and finish up installing in rural Texas and just get around to us when you feel ready, k?

I don't know what alternatives you have for access there (IE, who you're currently using), but here in Tampa it's basically Verizon FIOS and Bright House. While there may be something to say for FIOS's network speed, Bright House wasn't too bad when I used it, and their current HD TV line up and general cable service have some strong points over Verizon's [myspace.com]. Enough to where I'm tempted to switch back, at least until Verizon's HD channels start matching up with Bright House's.

In french urban areas, the standard ADSL is 24Mb/s ATM (8 to 18Mb/s real TCP BW) for 29 to 39E/Mo (with unlimited phone and taxes included), but in a few major cities, 100Mb/s cable is being deployed and sold for the same price.

6MB here (Alberta, CA) for what you are paying, 10MB would be about $80 a month, but that doesnt mean anything as im in a fairly populous city, in Edmonton and Calgary you can get 25MB lines...however basically within walking distance (15KM) they barely have dial-up (28.8), as a random estimate I would probably say that the average speed for Alberta as a whole would be about 1MB... BC, which has integrated DSL more so, is probably averaging 3MB... with highs (excluding business lines 100MBit+) up to 25MB an

Ya that's what irks me about all uplinks... 1mbit would have been plenty in the 90's, but this is the age of P2P and VPN and telework. It's real f'ing annoying to have to wait 2 hours just to transfer a big document between my home and office PCs.

If only I could run an ethernet cable to the local exchange down the street:P How hard could it possibly be ?

In the UK, broadband speeds are typically in the 8-24Mb/s range. I first visited the USA around a decade ago, and Internet speeds I saw advertised back then were much faster than anything I could get back home (where ISDN at 128Kb/s was the fastest and was incredibly expensive).

They do say median. Some areas, like rural sections, probably bring that down. And yes, there are a bunch of those areas on the east coast (though not as much as the mid-west).

Here in NJ (east coast US) we have Verizon Fiber as an option. I'm personally on a 20Mbit connection and I think they go up to 50Mbit for consumer-level. There might be faster offerings for consumers but 20 is fast enough for me.

Honestly, I'm not really sure why this was warranting front page space. It's sort of one of those newsflash: people in the developed world have easy access to phones sort of posts.

Of course the east coast is going to have faster service than most of the rest of the country. There's a much higher population density in New England in particular, as well as much more money than most of the rest of the country.

I think I speak for all of the US when I say that I hate you.:-p Seriously though, that's about 1 hr 20 minutes full throttle on my DSL which is the fastest 2 way connection in my area (1.5/384 or I could get 3m/56k cable and tie up a phoneline). Pretty sad considering I'm in a fairly populous area. PA sucks for broadband unless you live next to a Verizon building.

Well until recently I had a 1Mbps DSL which was plenty enough for my needs, but moving to a new place I found it had residential optical fiber, which costs about the same (not sure of the exact details, the first 5 months are free, but I think it works out to about US$40 a month).
And if it's any consolation, trans-Pacific connections aren't exactly fast (300Kb / sec on average) so it's not like I'm maxing out the tube all the time.

What do you do with that bandwidth? I have 15Mbps and can't seem to make use of it. Every once in a while I download an ISO or something, and it is helpful then. But I just don't do it often enough to care if it takes 1 minute or 5.

Good question, I've only had it a week, and my router only does 54Mbps anyway... I can get good quality streaming video (probably not MPAA approved) from South Korea though, and there is lots of streaming content (TV, VOD) available for an extra fee (kind of like cable in reverse).

With that kind of bandwidth you can start using the internet as your local network. It means you can put your nice little server in a nice colo, and use that from home. Or from your friends house - and not notice it very much that it isn't local.

Or you can have your server at home, and when at your friends place, you just mount your homedir from your home-box straight into the filesystem of your friends box - and play, say the divx that's located in your homedir on your home-box. On his computer.

This test is the same like those websites where you can test your download speed. They are all flawed in that they don't take your subscription into account. If you have somebody who subscribed for a cheapass 512/512 ADSL, he pulls the average down. Those tests should be limited to those who pay for "all you can get". Otherwise it tells more about a states economical position then about their internet access.

They are all flawed in that they don't take your subscription into account.

It depends who's using the list. If I'm designing web pages, I want to know what people in my target demographic HAVE, not what they can get. If it's a penis size competition, then I question the study's usefulness. Besides, we have the Olympics for that - and China has the biggest gold dick. Though the US has true melting pot of total dicks.

Those tests should be limited to those who pay for "all you can get". Otherwise it tells more about a states economical position then about their internet access.

Isn't that kind of the point? Access should be measured by what's affordable, not the super-expensive $2000/month fiber optic connection you COULD get if you could afford it. This isn't a race or a competition, it's a comparison of where broadband speeds are the highest. That's going to include economic conditions.

Can you point me to a broadband provider that has an "all you can get" plan? Everywhere I look, the plans are based on some sort of limited max upload/download speed. While some of those are pretty high, there is no "all you can get" plan that I can find.

If I could get unlimited broadband I would need unlimited disk too. I'd have me a local cache of Wikipedia.

Heh. Actually, those are starting to appear, though probably not with all of wikipedia. It seems that one of the things the OLPC gang is doing is providing local caches of good-sized chunks of wikipedia, whatever their "field consultants" (local teachers) feel might be of interest to their kids and is available in the local language. Someone mentioned a 350MB Spanish subset, compressed to about 100M

If "cheapass" 512/512 (which I'd call SDSL, but that's beside the point) is $25 a month and 5mbit is $150, can you blame that guy for bringing down the average? Or is that maybe part of the point of these tests?
Or, in my case, 256k SDSL is $75, but I went hardcore and got our small town telephone coop's top of the line 768k for $90 a month (plus $15 for a phone line I wouldn't otherwise have). So I'm doing my part to bring the average up(/down less).

East Coast. Rhode Island (6.8Mbps) and Delaware (6.7Mbps) have the fastest, and nearly triple the national median download speed of 2.3Mbps. Rounding out the Top 5 states are New Jersey (5.8Mbps), Virginia (5Mbps) and Massachusetts (4.6Mbps).

The states with the slowest median download speeds primarily are located in the Midwestern or Western regions of the United States, including Idaho (1.3Mbps), Wyoming (1.3Mbps), Montana (1.3Mbps) and North Dakota (1.2Mbps); Alaska had the slowest download speed (0.8Mbps). I

Is anyone surprised that small, densely populated states have higher download speeds than large, sparsely populated ones? It's the same argument that comes up every time worldwide broadband speeds are discussed: small and dense = easier to wire.

That is partly because it is a lot more expensive to run cable of any kind where almost everything is paved over (streets, sidewalks, buildings, parking lots) versus an area where all you have to do is dig a trench, put your cable/conduit in, fill the trench back up.
Ok, yeah there are places where you have to dig up part of the street in the suburbs, but not for the whole length of cable you are putting in.

It's the population density, idiot! It's easier for France to have better broadband because the people are all close together! Japan is even faster because everyone in Japan lives in Tokyo which has a really big population density! You can't compare Paris to somewhere sparsely populated like New York!

That's basically a configuration decision. Upstream does matter, but for most people they're noticing the downstream more than the upstream.

My connection here is 1.5mbps up and 768kbps down, and I'm fine with that. Most of the issues I've had with speed on the net were related to my antiquated computer or the particular server rather than my actual connection. It's pretty uncommon for the bottle neck to be my bandwidth, if it's not the first two it's the number of connections in use.

So far it seems that the fastest AND most affordable internet (combo) here in the states is available in the Cincinnati area (that I've personally seen). It's got 3 major cities within about 1.5 hours, one of the busiest airports in the mid-west (I'm still EST time zone), a few major train rails and highways 70,71 and 75 all very near by. This makes it a prime location for major companies, except that there aren't THAT many (proctor and gamble is here for example).

I mention this because there aren't too many nerdy types like me out here.. except that they set up the broadband out here to handle major *potential* commercial needs.

So here I sit paying $50 a month for "20 meg download" (which is literally about 2.4-2.5 megabytes per second at maxed connection). That's the upgraded package. Normally it's $40 for "10 meg download"... but 10$ more for double the connection? Easy choice for me! What is interesting is that my speeds actually can hit that through usenet / bittorrents.

Just curious, do these speeds at that low of a price exist anywhere else out there for that cheap? I've not yet heard of that elsewhere. I use Insight Broadband [insightbb.com]. Note: Internet speeds are great, but the commercials and customer service / "pay-by-internet" really really suck.

Three of the top five are among the smallest states in the Union by total land area. They are mostly densely populated, too.

Virginia has the extra bonus that it has suburbs of Washington, D.C. and several government installations. The Pentagon is actually not in D.C. (although its postal address says it is), but is in Arlington. The FBI and CIA are headquartered in the state. One of the largest USMC bases is there, along with the DEA and FBI training centers. There's a Federal Reserve Bank. Qimonda has a DRAM fab there, and Genworth Financial is headquartered in the state. Of course it has all kinds of telecom infrastructure.

NoVa used to be the home of PSInet, WorldCom, AOL, CAIS, XO, Ardent, UUNet,... there's a whole lot of connectivity in the Reston / Ashburn / Dulles corridor heading out 7, as there's still a massive number of tech companies out there. And it's also the current home of 3 of the 5 peering points of MAE-East.

Ok I didn't RTFA but doesn't it only really matter for what municipality you live in, and not the state/region average? In that scenario, my service far outpaces every one listed in the summary, at somewhere around 15Mbps for $25/month.

I get about 756k in Miami for $10 a month. I could go faster I guess, but why bother? When I went from 2400 baud to 44k baud, that was really cool. When I went from 44k baud to cable modem, that was really cool. Any incremental increase after that is eh.

Want to know why we have slow broadband? GREED! Telco's have figured out we will all open our wallets at a certain speed and are trying to milk us for every penny without upgrading their infrastructure. Why don't you have 100mb fibre at your house? Because the Telco's want to spend that $60+ per month on ferrying around their CEO in a chartered jet rather than to provide the service your paying for. Its rather comical that the Cable companies and telco's are screaming about bandwidth when we have the mos

Of course they do. The east is the leading edge of the continent as the earth spins eastward, the northeast even more so - so the electrons are moving the fastest as the earth spins in that direction. Rhode island of course beat the larger Maine NH and MA because it's so tiny the electrons don't have to go so far. And I know what's next - then why didn't tiny CT fare as well? Aha! It's much hillier than RI! Delaware? Small and flat. See? By the time they get from the northeast to the rest of the co

I live 5 minutes away from MAE-East so you'd think internet access would cost less here, but I'm paying $60 per month for 15/2. I'd be willing to bet that the recent surge in advertised speeds has more to do with marketing than capacity.

At some point a few years ago ISPs realized that most web services don't have the bandwidth on their end to serve lots of users with 15 megabit connections, so they'd never actually have to provide all that bandwidth. They decided they were going to use speed purely as a marketing gimmick and started selling "15 megabit" connections with no capacity to back them up. That's why they hate BitTorrent so much -- it forces them to deliver the product they advertise (what an insane concept!). They oversell bandwidth by a factor of 100 and then turn around and label people who actually use the capacity they pay for as "bandwidth hogs". It's pitiful.

I don't understand this at all. Tupac said "Let's show these fools how we do it on the west side, cause you and I know it's the best side." All this talk about west coast is the best coast, now you're trying to tell me east side is better? That doesn't even rhyme! How do you expect me to believe you?

its like the article on slashdot awhile back comparing high speed in the far east to the usa: pointless

what you are really comparing is population densities

notice something interesting about the states listed? they are all small, compact, and densely populated

new york state, for example, is sparsely populated, mostly, but i'll bet you speeds in the city and on long island are as high as anywhere else

so new york state isn't listed, or california, but that doesn't mean a damn thing, because all you are doing is taking note that these states have large areas that are low in population density, and therefore broadband penetration

After you get up to a couple megabits a second of download speed, who cares?

What I would REALLY appreciate is some upload speed. I understand why the situation is the way that it is ("All your base are belong to us.") but I'd love to be able to do really high quality voice conferencing.

Also, I notice that no one here is complaining about quality, per se. That's good and it's a pretty big difference from attitudes ten years ago.

It's mostly due to competition. Cherry picking the population centers is how you get the most customers per mile of cable. That's why you can get high speeds in cities (and new 'burbs), but the rural towns just 100 to 200 miles out are still on dialup. The more they try and consolidate on pop centers, the higher the speeds go. Sometimes it's just the threat of competition that ups speeds. Where I am, Comcast doubled everybody's speed when Verizon was considering wiring for FIOS. Then Verizon decided to sk

No, it has more to do with which carriers are dominant in different regions.

Verizon is the successor to two of the regional operating companies spun off after the 1984 AT&T divestiture, Bell Atlantic, which covered the mid-Atlantic region, and NYNEX, which merged New England Telephone and New York Telephone. That means the east coast (north of Virginia) has much more FiOS penetration than the rest of the US.

Comcast also has a large presence in the northeast. Regardless of your opinion of their policie

What is that competition you are talking about? For last three years, I do not have any choice other than comcast for "high speed internet". And this is central NJ - probably the largest urban sprawl in the whole freaking world.

The only thing wrong with NJ is the taxes, cost of property, and the state gov.

Beyond that it's a nice place to live. Everyone always thinks all of NJ is inner-city Newark because that's all the see from the Parkway and Turnpike because of trees and sound dividers, or when they land at Newark International Airport, or look at us across the river.

When it fact it's a nice place with plenty of trees and forests.

Some people I know were talking about how they drove to NJ for the first time from out west. They